History of Car Seats | From Burlap Sacks to LATCH Standards

For the full breakdown, see our best Vintage Car Seats guide.

The history of car seats in the U.S. is a surprisingly short arc from burlap sacks with leg holes to engineering-driven safety devices anchored directly into the vehicle frame. For most of their early existence, these products weren’t built to protect children in a crash at all.

What Were the Earliest Car Seats Actually For?

Through the 1930s and 1940s, child restraints were designed around two goals: keeping a restless child from wandering the cabin and letting them see out the window. They were convenience items, not protective gear.

• 1933: The Bunny Bear Company is widely cited as producing one of the first dedicated child seats, a simple booster meant to elevate the child.
• 1940s: Canvas and metal-frame seats became common, raising children for visibility rather than securing them for impact.
• 1962: British journalist and mother Jean Ames is credited with one of the first safety-focused designs, including a rear-facing concept with a harness. That same year, U.S. inventor Leonard Rivkin filed patents for a seat with his own safety features.
• 1964: Swedish engineer Beril Aldmann developed a rear-facing seat resembling modern designs.

None of these early seats met anything close to today’s crash standards, because no such standards existed yet. A seat from the 1950s typically lacks a harness, rear-facing capability, or a secure attachment method — useful for seeing the road, useless in a collision.

When Did Automakers and the Government Get Involved?

Serious crash protection arrived in the late 1960s, when automakers brought engineering resources to the problem.

In 1968, Ford released the Tot-Guard and General Motors introduced the Love Seat, both built with crash protection in mind rather than simple containment. The federal government followed quickly. A later summary notes that dynamic crash testing wasn’t yet part of the requirement.

That gap closed in 1981, when the stricter FMVSS 213-80 standard took effect. It applied to rear-facing infant restraints, car beds, and forward-facing seats for children under 50 pounds. It also introduced a frontal crash test at 30 mph, buckle-release-force limits, labeling rules, and instruction requirements.